Bleed Like Me (20 page)

“Why won't you tell me about it?” I asked one night, playing with the new blue in his hair. I'd spent the night bleaching and
re-dyeing him, no easy task considering I'd had to sneak buckets of water out of the McDonald's. Gary and Bruce got drunk and dyed their chest hair blue “in solidarity,” whatever that meant.

“Juvie doesn't matter. It doesn't mean anything other than my time away from you.”

He laced his fingers in mine and put them over the tattoo on his chest.

“All that therapy in the hospital was bullshit. But there was something about just saying things out loud that made it sort of better.”

“Well, juvie sure wasn't hospital therapy.” The bitterness in his tone lashed out at me. He took a deep breath and squeezed my fingers. “We've talked about this before. I'm not inviting you into my crap salad. This. Here. Now. It's all that matters.”

My heart pounded. I felt that way too sometimes, but when I got close to it, near enough to poke it with a stick and examine it, the feeling overwhelmed me with fear.

I licked my way up his stomach to the Gannon bleeding-heart tattoo. My tongue traced over it and I ached for something I didn't know how to explain.

“You want something,” he said, somehow invading my thoughts.

I shook my head.

“You do. You just don't know how to tell me yet.”

I opened my mouth, but before I could answer, the door
to our room flung open. Gary stood in a towel and flannel shirt.

“Brooks. We're going to do the Polar Bear Club in the Mississippi River. Grab a towel and let's roll.”

Brooks tried to sit up, but my hand pushed him back down. I wrapped the blanket tighter around myself, wary of Gary seeing me even in a tank top and pajama shorts.

“The Polar Bear Club is in January,” I said.

“No. They do it like every month in Minnesota. This guy at the sushi place told me about it. It has something to do with this Swedish thing. You submerge yourself in the Mississippi and then you sit in a hot sauna until you're completely fried. And then you go back in the Mississippi again. You see how many times you can do it before passing out.”

I arched a brow at him. “And this is fun to you?”

“Hell, yeah!” he shouted. A sound of a flowing stream came from the living room behind Gary. I peeked past him and saw Bruce peeing in the yellow chicken bucket. Classy. He pulled his trunks up and popped his head in.

“Brooks, my man, are you coming?” Bruce had on an
I SEE DUMB PEOPLE
T-shirt that stretched too tight across his beer belly. His hairy legs peeked out from his long bathing-suit trunks and snow boots.

“No,” I said at the same time Brooks said, “Yeah.”

I shook my head. “This isn't October at the pool. It's late March in Minnesota. You'll freeze.”

Bruce flapped his hands at me. “No. Dude, didn't you hear what Gary said about the sauna? Hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold. It's totally good for you.”

Gary bounced on his feet next to Bruce, nodding his head.

“You all are lunatics. Brooks stays here.”

Brooks sat up and I quickly snatched the blanket to my chest.

“I love you, sweetheart, but I'm going. I need something like this.”

He dropped a kiss on my speechless mouth and rifled through his duffel bag for a towel. My eyes widened. He was really doing this?

Before I could move, jump up, and forcibly tie him to the bed, he was out the door with Gary and Bruce. Laughter circled them, and a tiny piece inside me cracked off.

•  •  •

Instead of sitting in our too-quiet apartment, waiting for the guys to get back, I went to the Pizza by the Slice. It was the only place I could think of. No one really talked to me there, except the customers. I didn't know Spanish, and every other employee spoke it all the time. The manager ignored me except to hand me money at the end of the week and tell me to move faster when I got slices for people.

I ordered a piece of cheese pizza and retreated to a corner table. I picked the cheese off my slice and rolled it into a ball on the edge of my plate. After two weeks of working at the
Pizza by the Slice and eating for free, my face had broken out from the grease. Now I stuck to the boxed salads and the pizza dough. And tried not to think about my brothers maybe eating the same thing.

A woman in a brown sweater and long corduroy skirt walked in. I'd seen her a few times. She was quiet. Probably about thirty years old. Ate her slice alone and read books at one of the tables by the window. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, but her face was clear and free of tension. Her eyes scanned the restaurant after she ordered, and with her plate in her hand she walked toward me.

“Can I join you?”

I blinked at her. Didn't she see the fifteen empty tables around me? “Why?”

“I don't feel like eating alone,” she said, and sat down across from me.

I shrugged. Evidently, my feelings on the matter weren't important.

“You work here, right?” she asked, cutting her slice with a plastic fork and knife.

I nodded.

“Are you in school?”

A blush reached my cheeks before I could tamp it down. “No.”

“How old are you?”

“How old are you?” I snapped back.

“Thirty-two,” she said with a smile.

I didn't say anything, so she took a few bites of pizza. I rolled the ball of cheese around my plate.

“You seem young,” she said at last. “Are you at the U?”

“Hardly,” I snorted.

“How old are you?” she asked again.

I lifted my chin. “Eighteen.”

“Oh. Do you live around here?”

I raised a shoulder. Why was this random woman prying into my life? Caution licked at me from the inside but warred with a desperate need to connect with somebody. Anybody.

“Well, I do,” she said. “I've seen you walking to work. I'm not trying to pry. Just making conversation.”

The spring inside me released. I was being too cagey. “Sorry. I'm not used to people being interested in me.”

“Really?” Her eyebrows shot up and she studied me more closely. “Not even your parents?”

I barked out a laugh. “No. Definitely not them.”

“Don't they ask about your day when you get home?”

Guilt burned in the back of my throat. “I don't live with them,” I mumbled.

“Oh. Do you live by yourself?”

“Do you live by yourself?” I fired back. She may have been trying to be nice, but Brooks's paranoia had seeped into me.

“Yeah. I do. I work at the library.”

I laughed and she tilted her head. “Sorry,” I said. “Just with the bun and everything, it's kind of cliché.”

She smiled. “Yeah. And now I'm the lonely spinster talking to random strangers in the pizza place.”

“Yeah. Something like that,” I answered.

She took another bite of pizza. “I just felt like talking to someone tonight and my friends aren't around.”

“Oh. Okay. Umm . . . I live with my boyfriend and a couple of roommates.”

I wanted so much for this to be normal, but as soon as I said “boyfriend” I felt like I'd said too much. I pushed out of my seat before she could ask me any more questions. I snatched my plate and dumped it into the trash.

“I gotta go,” I stammered. “I'll see you.”

She nodded and pursed her lips. The door swung open wide and I bolted outside, pushing the incoming delivery guy out of the way.

On the way home I thought about calling Ali. I missed her more than I'd thought I could. I wanted to talk to her, tell her everything, spill everything so that I didn't feel so incredibly alone. But I couldn't. For Brooks or for myself. Ali was too connected to my old life. I needed someone else. But I couldn't entertain the possibility of a new friend. Not with how things were with Brooks and me. My life, my future belonged to him.

•  •  •

“Where were you?” Brooks asked as soon as I took a step into the living room. He snatched my hand and pulled me into our room, slamming the door behind us.

I crossed my arms. “Why do you care? If I don't have any say in you throwing yourself into the Mississippi, you certainly don't have any say in what the hell I do.”

He flinched. “I came back,” he said, his voice dropping. “I felt bad and I came back. And you weren't here.” His face was too raw, too vulnerable, too un-Brooks. “I was worried.”

I stepped toward him and he pulled me into his arms. “Sorry,” I whispered.

“Don't make me go through that again. I thought something happened to you. Then I thought you'd left me.”

“Silly boy.” I tugged on his hair. “I love you.”

“I can't lose you. Do you understand?” The intensity of him stole my breath.

I nodded.

He lifted my chin and stared hard at me. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“I got you a gift,” he said, releasing me and picking up a brown bag next to his duffel bag. “I know you're missing something. You won't tell me, but I can see it. We can get it back.” His hand slipped into the bag and he pulled out a small
envelope. He shook it and two tabs of E slipped into his hand.

I gasped. Part of me wanted to snatch them from his fingers and take them both myself, get back that feeling of everything being possible, and the other part wanted to throw them out the window and draw everything I ached for out of Brooks. The boy who'd turned my life upside down and wouldn't help me right it. I was too paralyzed to move, straddled on the line of a decision I didn't know how to make.

“I thought you said this wasn't a good idea for me.” My voice shook.

“But you liked it, right? It made you feel good. You need it. I can tell.” He pressed one of the tabs into my open hand and I stared. “Let's do this together.”

Tears blurred my vision. “I can't,” I whispered. “I want it so much, but it's not right. It's not what I'm missing. I'll just want more.”

He took the pill from my hand and dropped both pills back into the envelope before skimming his fingers over my tears. “Then what is it? What can I do?” Pleading desperation. God, why couldn't I fix this? Fix him? Fix me?

My knees crumpled and I curled onto the bed. I had no answer. Not anything I understood or could explain. All I had was the truth of the moment. “Love me.”

So he did.

A week later I walked in from work to a hillbilly chemistry lab. Gary and Bruce had gloves and lab goggles on. I could see the bright blue chest hair through their white T-shirts. Brooks sat smoking on the couch.

“What's up?”

“Did anyone follow you?” he asked, looking me up and down.

My shirt was covered in pizza sauce and my hair was droopy. I'd run out of the detangler I used in place of actually washing my hair every day, and it didn't seem in the budget to replace it. I'd started eating only twice a day, once at the Pizza by the Slice and once with Brooks in the morning. We spent our money on rent, cigarettes, and condoms. Brooks had lost so much weight I suspected he wasn't eating anything aside
from the bagel sandwiches we got in the mornings or whatever suspicious-looking leftover sushi Gary and Bruce brought home.

“No one followed me. No one asked questions. No one said anything in English to me all day, other than ‘Give me a slice.' ”

He tugged me onto the couch beside him and kissed my forehead. “Poor baby.” His hands moved to massage my neck and I melted into him, watching the crazy around us.

“What are you two up to?” I asked.

Gary lifted his goggles. “We're making moonshine.”

I laughed. “You're shitting me.”

Bruce grinned and I noticed he had something green in his teeth. “No. I found a recipe on the Internet.”

“Do we suddenly have a computer?” I asked. Of course we didn't. We didn't have running water. I had to bathe in the sink at work or at the McDonald's, a sort of sponge bath like they'd done for me at the hospital. I was convinced my manager thought I was homeless, which I might as well have been for the number of times I'd brushed my teeth in a bathroom riddled with graffiti. Gary and Bruce had worked out some sort of agreement with the McDonald's manager that involved providing him with dime bags of weed once a week for no questions asked. When I snuck in the back entrance every morning and night, I kept my head down and tried not to draw attention to the fact that I never bought food there.

“There's a computer at work,” Bruce said, completely missing my sarcasm. “Gary, hand me that funnel.” The two of them started to bicker over the directions. Then they disappeared into their room with a large glass jug.

Brooks's fingers played on the base of my spine and I sighed. “Rough day, sweetheart?” he whispered into my ear.

“Something like that. What about you? Any luck on the job front?”

Brooks tensed. I shouldn't have pushed it. I knew he was discouraged over the whole thing. I'd stopped asking him after the first few weeks, but we'd been with Gary and Bruce for over a month and I didn't know how much longer I could hole up with them.

“No,” he said. “But I talked to Kenji again. He said a guy was nosing around asking questions. I'm sure it was my dad.”

I leaned forward, turned and looked at him. “Really?”

Annoyance flashed across his face. “I told you he was determined. That's why you always need to be careful about who you talk to. He won't let me walk away without trying to find me.”

“Couldn't it have been your probation officer?”

“I'm sure it was my dad.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but Brooks held his hand up.

“It doesn't matter. I won't let him get near us. Kenji won't tell him anything.”

Somehow trusting a drug dealer didn't feel quite as reassuring to me as it obviously did to Brooks. But I also couldn't quite wrap my head around the idea that Brooks's dad was coming for him.